“The Russian authorities have used mass detentions as a tactic to crush peaceful protests. But the reprisals haven’t stopped there. Hundreds of peaceful protesters in Moscow and St Petersburg were locked up in police stations overnight, in plainly degrading conditions, crowded cells with little or no food, bedding or easy access to sanitation,” said Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International.
“We have received numerous reports of people piled on top of one another in police stations, where police dealing with extreme backlogs in processing cases forced them to stay overnight on the floor or even on the street while in police custody. It is an outrage for anybody to be detained and subjected to these inhumane conditions, let alone detained simply for peacefully expressing their views.”
According to OVD-Info monitoring group, Russia’s police forces detained at least 1,721 peaceful protesters on June 12, smashing its already atrocious record when more than a thousand people were detained during a previous wave of peaceful demonstrations in March.
The latest wave of arrests saw around 800 peaceful demonstrators detained in Moscow alone, and a similar number in St Petersburg, with dozens more locked up in cities and towns across Russia. While most of them were released shortly after police processed their individual administrative detention reports, the backlog forced hundreds to wait overnight for their reports and, in many cases, their trials.
“It appears the authorities in Russia wanted to send a further message by making these detentions slow, humiliating and painful. The Russian authorities must stop detaining peaceful protesters, whose only ‘crime’ was to irk those in power. If there are any case where protesters are arrested for an internationally recognizable offence, they must be treated in a humane manner” said Krivosheev.
Amnesty International reiterates its call on Russian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all peaceful protesters detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly during anti-corruption rallies.